


Stranded

by verucasalt123



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Gen, Purgatory, Season/Series 07 Spoilers, Unhappy Ending, hunger, preslash if you're wearing your goggles, totally Jossed by S8
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-23
Updated: 2013-04-23
Packaged: 2017-12-09 06:17:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/770968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verucasalt123/pseuds/verucasalt123
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean & Cas in purgatory for 7x23 comment-fic meme</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stranded

There was just so much _darkness_. No light, no sun, no day or night. 

A cave was what they had, the two of them, hiding out, trying to avoid the monsters that sought them out with determination.

Dean had a bag of M&Ms in the inside pocket of his jacket. He rationed them, just a few at a time. Cas didn’t need food, but he knew that Dean did. Days passed before Cas returned to their hiding spot, smiling and holding out a handful of strangely colored berries out in his hand. 

“I found these. They are safe for you to consume. And there are more, so when I can go back out again, I will bring them back.”

The berries tasted sour but Dean assumed they had to be healthier than candy. Cas wouldn’t have brought them if they weren’t. 

Despair had already set in. Neither of them could think of a way to escape. Dean knew that Sam would be doing everything he could to get them back, if he had figured out where they were. Had he figured it out? 

Worse than that, maybe he had figured it out and there was no telling the lengths he would go to in order to get him out, to get both of them out. He remembered what Sam had done in the past in an effort to save him from Hell, and the thought of him going to such extreme measures made him almost wish that Sam would just give up and leave them there.

Almost. 

The battle in his conscious raged incessantly. He wanted Sam to find a way to get them out, get them home. But the thought of what it had cost Sam the last time Dean had been taken away…Christ, he never wanted his brother to go through something like that again. 

On the other hand, someone had to figure this out. 

Dean never left the little cave they found for shelter. Cas only left for brief periods, knowing he was powerful enough to fight off at least most of the monsters he might encounter. Even so, he often returned bloody and injured. And yeah, sure, he could heal himself, but that wasn’t the fucking point. Cas was putting himself at risk every time he ventured out into the wasteland surrounding them. 

They were stranded. The basic needs of survival were all they could afford to think about. 

Some days, even when he was uninjured, Castiel would come back looking defeated. 

“I was trying to find something else, something you could eat. You’re starving. Malnourished. You won’t last long like this. Dean.”

And yeah, okay, Cas was never one to sugarcoat reality, but hearing that was hard to take. 

In his line of work, Dean had thought of many, many ways he could die. But starving to death hadn’t even been one of them. He knew what was happening. The feeling of emptiness, the gnawing sensation in his belly, the **hopelessness** bearing down on him…it’s not like he’d never felt that before. He’d been hopeless in Hell, after the initial _Sam’s going to find a way to get me out_ had faded, he’d resigned himself to an eternity of torture and pain. 

This was similar. He had the same feeling at first, exactly the same, _Sam’s going to find a way to get me out_ , but it seemed like so much time had passed, months, maybe even years. Maybe time wasn’t the same in the real world, maybe Sam was still trying. But maybe not. 

And it wasn’t like there was anyone else left to make the effort. So if Sam had given up, this was it for him, and for Castiel. 

They’d settled into a routine. On the occasions that he didn’t feel like he was half-dead, Dean ventured out. He looked for food, he looked for doors, he looked for any fucking thing that might help them get out. Most of the time it was Cas, silently prowling the edges of the territory he could reach without attracting attention, searching for an escape route, finding nothing but blackness and monsters and glowing eyes in the dark. 

At some point, it occurred to him to ask.

“Cas. How long?”

Castiel cast a cautious look in his direction. “How long for what, Dean?” He was stalling. He knew what Dean was asking.

“How long have we been here? I mean, as far as time goes, in the world, in my world. How long?”

Castiel was silent, he didn’t want to answer, didn’t want to look at Dean.

Frustrated, Dean shouted, “ _How fucking long_ , Cas?”

There were a few more moments of silence. Castiel was clearly trying to find a way to say what he knew, what Dean didn’t know, what he didn’t want to say. But Dean wouldn’t let it go, and Castiel finally broke and told him the truth.

“Sixty years.”

Dean felt his heart sink down to his feet and his breaths became harder and faster.

Sixty years. Sam was an old man, if he was even still alive. And Dean knew, he _knew_ it would take a whole hell of a lot for Sam to give up on trying to save him. But sixty years? No one could hold on for that long. 

Dean and Cas, they hadn’t been here for long, not that long anyway. The reality, though, was that they were on their own. If one or the other of them couldn’t find some way out, they were stranded. Neither of them had aged a day since they landed here. So maybe they’d live forever, with nothing more than just trying to _live_ , to survive another day. 

Castiel reached out to touch Dean, something he hadn’t done since they’d been pulled into this horrific place. 

“I am so sorry. I wish-”

“Stop. Cas, stop, please. We knew what kind of chance we were taking when we went up against Dick Roman. Hell, you wouldn’t have even been there if I hadn’t made you feel guilty about trying to stay out of it. This is all on me, man. All of it. So if one of us should be saying they’re sorry, it should be me.”

Castiel studied him for a moment, then just moved until his head was against Dean’s chest and Dean’s arm was around his shoulders. 

“We’re stuck until we find a way out. But we’re not going to stop looking, right? Maybe we’ll find ourselves stranded alone again once we get back to our own place, the place where we belong, but until then, we’ll keep trying.”

“Of course, Dean. I feel terribly selfish, and I wish this had happened only to me and not you, but…being stranded here, just trying to survive…it would have been much harder if I’d been alone.”

Dean pulled Castiel a little closer and responded, “Yeah. Yeah, I know. Me too.”


End file.
